


To Be Red

by truehumandisaster



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Feelings, Gen, Repressed Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 14:36:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10026032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truehumandisaster/pseuds/truehumandisaster
Summary: Savage Opress is more than they made him.





	

His thoughts have not always been this way, he knows. Once, they were something greater than dim shapes and constant rage that tints the world red and pain, pain, pain. His heartbeat is a torrent of suffering, and whenever the fired blaze of his lightsaber hisses in his hand, he becomes something even worse. Worse than suffering, worse than death, worse than nightmares that clot his veins. He is Savage Opress. He is apprentice, Sith, monster. He is alive with these names.

His thoughts have not always been this way, but he can remember nothing else. Sometimes, when death is breathing down his neck, a memory finds him: the crooked horn of another or the scent of a cooking fire or the rough protection he would give to— The memories stop as quickly as they begin. They do not exist for Savage. He is war. He is darkness. He is monster.

He stares at his brother and thinks how they were equals once, briefly, for a glorious beat in the heart of the universe. But Maul has a rage in him that Savage has never fully mastered, and both know it. They are not brothers, not equals. Maul does not return Savage’s look, and his focus reminds Savage of their mission. It is the mission of all those who collapse to the Dark Side: control, power, fear.

Yet Savage’s thoughts have not always been this way -- all shadows and whispers and threats. He has never sought grand purpose. He has never wanted a deep control. (And control, he has learned again and again, is to be possessed through fear alone.) He thinks he wanted something quieter, but he is not certain.

“We are nearly there, Savage,” Maul hisses. The man is terror and purpose. He is predator. He takes the name _monster_ and turns it into something to be admired. This is all Savage feels for him: admiration. “Ready your saber, brother. They will swarm us, but we will not fall. This is the will of the Force.”

There is little that Savage understands in his world of shadows and pain. He knows obedience, he knows strength, he knows hatred. He knows to serve the Dark Side, for the light is something terrible in its brightness. He was born from the thirst of vengeance; it is his purpose. He feels it flooding him, robbing him of sleep and hunger and want of his own. There is nothing light in him.

(But once, there was a boy who had only one want of his own. In the throes of dawn, he would sit beside his friend — what was his name? _Oh Force, oh Mother, please give me his name_ — and watch the horizon. There was no deeper understanding to this. The boy loved, and it was simple.)

Savage is angry. This is not a new emotion, although it is a powerful one. It feeds this thing inside of him, and he feels it growing as their ship lands. It starts in his stomach, and it spreads. Like an illness. Like terror. ~~Like love~~. He shakes with it, and as the ship’s doors slide open, the scattered carts on the landing pad outside shudder with his power. It is the only time Savage sees a glimmer of sharp joy in Maul’s eyes: when he gives into this thing called the Force.

“Who—?” The woman’s question cuts off. She gasps. It is the reaction of all those who see the brothers, who have learned to fear their names. Savage knows it is weakness, the Jedi’s weakness, to ache for those they cannot protect. She turns to the ones behind her and yells, “Run, padawans! Flee! Get inside and bar the door!”

All know she will not be able to protect the young ones.

Savage’s thoughts have not always been this way, but they were strongest before he killed. Red consumes him. Red becomes him. Nothing came before it.

(But there once was a boy who sat beside another -- _what was his name?_ \-- and, together, they looked beyond the horizon. Each were scared of the women who would come, but the taller of the two took the other’s hand in his own. Comfort. “I won't let them take you, Feral. You are meant for bright suns and golden galaxies. I will kill them if they try.”)

Nothing came before this.

His lightsaber screams of fire and red, red, red. There is nothing besides this color. Nothing besides crimson and blood, and this is why Maul is red, red, red. He belongs to these thoughts. Maul’s saber comes alive next to Savage.

Together, the brothers run toward the Jedi.

They are fury.  
They are Sith.  
Nothing more.


End file.
